βucharest Urban League of photographers for the Balkans

The effort to "make oneself permanently able to remove oneself from oneself" has, as its corollary, a concomitant effort to involve others. Adopting the form of Klee's drawing named “Angelus Novus” the photographer becomes an angel observer where he perceives a chain of events, he collects images of people and random objects that act as readymades in city's enviroment that gives birth to a dystopian reality which keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. The effort to involve others is still valid.

"One thing that is striking is that in analysis there is an entire element of the real of the subject that escapes us. . . . There is something that brings the limits of analysis into play, and it involves the relation of the subject to the real" Jacques Lacan -1982

The photographer produces a subjective representation of reality. A reality that often seems elusive and enigmatic. Inspired by the mythological fifth element Aether (or Quintessence) the current series of photos act as a medium to an alternative reality. Either plainly an illusion or possibly a depiction of dark energy, quintessence is present, forcing us to exist within excessively small whirlpools.

Athens is astonishing. Τhe city’s most revealing aspects are those that depart from the expected, familiar and treasured historic cityscapes, those that invite the gaze down a more obscure path.

Argyris Drolapas’s photographs organize a new a visual culture around Athens, using his black-and-white, duotone impressions of the city, intimate yet simultaneously distanced, to pose both ambiguous and succinct questions. With a combination of harshness and tenderness, the city gradually emerges from the now-distant 20th century, a time when Athens swelled rapidly and acquired all the characteristics of a metropolis.

Its hybrid architecture, comprising neoclassical relics and all the stages of Modernism, makes Athens a charming melting pot that stands out in the Mediterranean world. These insights in stills into a personal point of view that is well practiced in "reading" the urban landscape, introduce us to a city that is much more complex and less predictable than the prevailing stereotypes that define it. And this is, in itself, extraordinary ... Nikos Vatopoulos, journalist